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Charlemagne42 Ballot for 2018 Preseason

Ballot Type: Human

Submitted: Aug. 19, 2018, 6:53 p.m.

Overall Rationale: Disclaimer: I think preseason polls are dumb because all we have to go on is what teams have said to the media all off-season. I prefer to let on-field results speak for themselves. The opinions contained below reflect my attempt to over-correct for all the hype and propaganda we've been basking in since January. This poll isn't supposed to be a joke, but it is supposed to expose the problems I see with preseason polls in general. My controversy score will probably be higher than I'm aiming for, but I am still trying to keep it down. I promise the real poll during the season will make much more sense.Put differently, the poll below isn't *too* far from what I think is reasonable, but who can say for sure when we haven't seen anyone play yet?Human poll while my computer poll gorges itself on early-season data. Around week 1-2 I'll switch to hybrid as I tweak settings and manually shift teams around slightly to correct the algorithm, but I'll start listing my algorithm's scores at that point. The first week when I don't make any manual adjustments, I'll switch it to computer. That should be around week 4-6. Expect it to start aligning more closely with the consensus by week 9-10.There is method behind my madness, my rationale is based on the idea that a poll should be predictive, not just descriptive. In service to that idea, I focus on team-level statistics like wins, strength of opponent, and where a team is likely to finish in conference based on all the other statistics. Individual statistics I believe are more subject to variability, and can't be relied upon to predict the results of games week-to-week.Algorithm status: testing and tweaking using old/hypothetical dataAlgorithm completion: 82%SettingsGrowth: 22.5%Ranked: 22.0%Undefeated: 36.0%Loss Quality: 5.5%Road Trip: 18%

Rank Team Reason
1 Washington Huskies If they win all their games they'll be the undisputed #1. For now they're #1 because everyone else tried too hard to not be #1. See below.
2 Georgia Bulldogs Would be #1 but their RB just tore his ACL.
3 Alabama Crimson Tide Dropped a few spots because Nick Saban can't "just s*** out" linebackers.
4 Clemson Tigers After their playoff embarrassment, they need to prove themselves first. That will be tricky given their relatively weak schedule.
5 Oklahoma Sooners Probably shouldn't be this high. See notes below.
6 Ohio State Buckeyes Not sure about Urban yet. In a vacuum they're #2 or so.
7 Auburn Tigers Can't put them higher because they lost to UCF. Can't put them lower because they haven't had any offseason problems, really.
8 Wisconsin Badgers Dropped a few spots after the news about their top receiver.
9 TCU Horned Frogs 9-19 or so are very uncertain for me. Any of these teams could go 12-1 or 8-4. Don't worry about the order. Note that not many of these teams had a lot of media coverage this off-season.
10 Miami Hurricanes
11 Penn State Nittany Lions
12 Mississippi State Bulldogs
13 Virginia Tech Hokies
14 West Virginia Mountaineers
15 Stanford Cardinal They have a returning Stanford Heisman (TM) winner and some engineering schematics titled "Success".
16 Michigan State Spartans
17 Florida State Seminoles
18 Oklahoma State Cowboys
19 Michigan Wolverines Why is Michigan at the back of the 9-19 bloc? Shea Patterson.
20 FAU Owls The Fightin' Freshwaters have no excuse not to run away with the C-USA and land in a NY6.
21 USC Trojans The Darnold's offensive line and receiver corps made him look much better than he actually is. Most of them are still around. USC isn't going away yet.
22 UCF Knights Frost held this team together. Heupel doesn't do defense. UCF will lose some shootouts.
23 Oregon Ducks
24 Purdue Boilermakers Apparently there's a hype train? No, I mean a literal train. A steam locomotive. Because they make boilers? You know what, forget I said anything.
25 Boise State Broncos What poll would be complete without the most consistent G5 team at #25?

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